“Wait until he hits bottom.”
“What if Alex doesn’t survive hitting bottom? Neither of our parents did.”
Unable to tolerate the fumes anymore, Sam replaced the top on the can of stain and went to the open window. He took a few deep, cleansing breaths of fresh air. “I guess we could try some kind of intervention,” he said doubtfully.
“If it gives us the chance to kick his ass around for a few minutes, let’s do it.”
Sam cast a brief smile over his shoulder and looked out at the vineyard, the green canopy reaching skyward. “Wouldn’t work with Al,” he heard himself say. The air was filled with the scent of growing vines, of sun-braised house shingles and plump blackberries, and the salty, fecund smell of False Bay.
When things had gotten especially bad in the past year, Alex would come over to work on the house or just sit on the porch. Sometimes Sam had persuaded him to walk through the vineyard or down to the bay with him. But Sam had had the feeling that the scenery was all shadows to Alex … he was moving through life without experiencing it.
Of all the Nolan offspring, Alex had had it the worst. With each year their parents’ neglect had metastasized until there had been nothing left for the youngest son. Now, long after Jessica and Alan were gone, Alex was like a drowning man—you could see him submerged just below the surface. But there was only so far you could go in the effort to help Alex. Get too near someone who was drowning, and in their desperate struggle, they would claw, grasp, and drag you down with them. And Sam wasn’t at all certain that he was in any shape to save anyone—at this point it was still unclear whether he could even save himself.
* * *
Lucy awakened in the morning in a welter of confusion. She’d been plagued by dreams that had left her with impressions of sliding, twisting, pleasure-tensed bodies … of herself, caught beneath the heavy welcome weight of a man. She had been dreaming of Sam, she acknowledged with mortified annoyance. Maybe it was a good sign—it certainly signaled that she had moved on from Kevin. On the other hand, it was idiotic. Sam was a guy for whom any relationship was a guaranteed dead-end street.
What she needed, Lucy decided, was exercise and fresh air. She left the inn, walked to her studio, and retrieved her bike and helmet. It was a beautiful day, sunny and breezy, perfect for visiting a local lavender farm and buying some handmade soap and bath oil.
She rode at a leisurely pace along Roche Harbor Road. Although it was the island’s busiest thoroughfare, it had a good wide shoulder for cyclists, and it offered charming views of orchards, pastures, ponds, and densely wooded forest. The pleasant monotony of the ride helped to settle her thoughts.
She considered how it had felt to see Kevin and Alice yesterday. It had been a welcome discovery to realize that she felt nothing for him anymore. The real problem, the source of continuing grief, was her relationship with Alice. Lucy recognized that some form of forgiveness was necessary for her own sake. Otherwise the pain of betrayal would follow Lucy like the closer-than-they-appear objects in a rearview mirror. But what if Alice never expressed any regret whatsoever? How did you forgive someone who wasn’t at all sorry for what they had done?
Hearing a car approach, Lucy took care to ride on the outmost edge of the shoulder to give the driver the widest possible berth. But in the next few seconds she felt that the car was coming on too fast, the sound of it was directly behind her. She glanced over her shoulder. The car, a boatlike sedan, had drifted out of the traffic lane and was swerving toward her. There was a blinding moment, in which she felt the draft of the car just before its impact against the back of her bike. The scene scattered like an overturned display of greeting cards. She was in the air, suspended and topsy-turvy among pieces of sky, slivers of forest and asphalt and metal, and then the ground zoomed up to her at light speed.
When she opened her eyes, her first thought was that it was morning, time to wake up. But she wasn’t in bed. She was sprawled in a patch of shivering weeds. A pair of strangers crouched over her, a man and a woman.
“Don’t move her,” the woman cautioned, a cell phone up to her ear.
“I’m just going to take off her helmet,” the man said.
“I don’t think you should do that. There might be a spinal cord injury or something.”
The man looked down at Lucy in concern as she began to move. “Wait, take it easy. What’s your name?”
“Lucy,” she gasped, fumbling with the chinstrap of her helmet.
“Here, let me help you take that off.”
“Hal, I told you—” the woman began.
“I think it’s all right. She’s moving her arms and legs.” He unbuckled the helmet and eased it off Lucy’s head. “No, don’t try to sit up yet. You got banged up real good.”